1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technology for forming a protrusion pattern such as ribs on a substrate with ribs (barriers) to be used for a plasma display panel (PDP), for example.
2. Description of the Related Art
As an example of the case where a substrate with a protrusion pattern is required, a PDP will be described. A PDP is a self light emitting display panel where a pair of substrates (normally glass substrates) are disposed facing each other with a small space in between, and a discharge space is created inside by sealing the periphery thereof.
Generally in a PDP, ribs (protrusions) with a 150-250 μm height are formed in a repeated manner on a substrate to partition the discharge space. For example, in the case of a surface-discharge PDP which is suitable for color display by a phosphor, ribs having a pattern which can be seen as stripes when the PDP is viewed directly are formed on the substrate with equal spaces in between along the address electrode lines. By these ribs, discharge interference and cross-talk of colors are prevented.
As a general process to fabricate a PDP substrate having the above mentioned structure, the address electrode pattern is formed on the substrate, and the ribs are formed so as to be aligned to the electrode pattern. Various methods have been proposed and used for forming the ribs, but typical methods are a multilayer printing method, sandblast method, embedding method, photo-lithography method and transfer method, of which the transfer method, with which the lowest cost may be possible, has high expectations.
The transfer method is a method of forming the ribs or a method of simultaneously forming ribs and a dielectric layer on a substrate, using an intaglio plate for transfer having grooves for forming ribs. As a procedure, a molding material is filled into the surface of the intaglio plate for transfer, then the cured molding material that was filled is transferred to the substrate to form the ribs and the dielectric layer (e.g. Japanese Patent No. 3321129 (Claims), Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open NO. H8-273537 (Claims), and Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-191345 (Claims).